I still wish the Humboldt Park line could be rebuilt, but obviously that's never gonna happen. :(

Under Richard J., well before the Orange Line, there was talk of extending the Green Line to Midway.

I don't get why they don't just start sending every other or every third Red Line train on to the end of the Yellow. I assume the platforms are too short? At this point they may as well since they are adding so many stations.

Oh God yes, fuck the Bloomingdale Trail, refit that shit with an EL line so the huge areas of Logan Square and Humbolt Park have access to downtown. That would spark a massive boom in Humbolt Park as it is an amazing area with really terrible transit access.

I did not know this, thanks for the heads up, I'll have to research it a little to see exactly what they were proposing.

Yellow can only accommodate 2-car trains. I'm sure someday that will be expanded to 4 or something, but I can't see it going all the way up to 8.

Up in the Twin Cities, all (most) of our old rail ROWs were purchased by the county regional railroad authorities back in the 70s and 80s with the intent of using them for future transitways. Of course, they all have bike paths down them now, but since they're owned by the RRAs, it's a much easier process to narrow the bike paths to put in transit.

Is the Bloomingdale Line wide enough to fit both heavy rail and pedestrian paths? I would guess yes, but they wouldn't want trains too close to the edge since parts of the viaduct don't look all that stable and some buildings overhan it slightly?

No, not at all.

I have to disagreed with Nowhereman, I think that using Bloomingdale ROW as a linear park will be more beneficial that using the same stretch as a Blue Line spur. At its furthest you would make it to Lawndale which would only be a 1.8mile expansion with maybe three additional stations and it would not displace the North Ave bus.

I know it would be vastly more expensive, but using the original Humboldt Branch alignment has possibilities to expand indefinitely westward, accessing a much larger pool of residents.

I agree with this completely. And you get to keep the benefit of the Bloomingdale trail. Really think a HP line should be considered.

From 1973: http://www.chicago-l.org/plans/1995plan.html

That plan also included one of the few actual proposals to link what are now the Blue and Brown Lines along Lawrence.

False, there is more than enough ROW to extend a Bloomingdale Trail line to Narragansett or perhaps ever further. Just have the EL tracks sandwich the existing freight lines. You'd just have to build a viaduct where it intersects with those other tracks to keep it grade separated from the active rail lines. Basically you could have it terminate at Brickyard and serve a huge swath of the city that has only limited Metra service right now.

I just believe there is simply not enough room to add two tracks as well as outboard stations to make a continuation along that line feasible.

On top of that, once you pass West of Kostner that rail line path is smack in the middle of an industrial corridor that diminishes access for residents, would be unattractive/desolate and has no direct connection to a retail corridor. Oh, and you would still have to operate the North Ave bus.

While building out this ROW for mass transit may be cheaper, I have reservations whether it would be remotely as successful as a line following the original Humboldt Branch/North Ave alignment.

I appreciate the link.

Interesting about the Brown Line extension to the Blue, that is something that I had been casually researching as well, having the Brown run down the Lawrence corridor and terminating at the Jefferson Park Transit Center. It would be a huge benefit to Albany Park and Mayfair in addition to providing a great link to OHare for Northsiders.

Not true. Dempster has short platforms but Oakton and any future stations must be designed to either accommodate 8 cars from the start or be sited such that platform extensions would be inexpensive later (ie straight track, 0.5% grades max, no obstacles like overpasses or tunnel mouths.

The increased focus of adding stations on the Yellow Line naturally leads into the question of why not route it downtown where people are actually going. The Purple Line tracks from Howard to Belmont aren't exactly swamped with traffic on a daily basis.

There are lots of questions, though. Should the Yellow Line trains terminate downtown, or continue to another destination? If they do terminate, how is that accomplished? There's not a ton of capacity on the Loop - it's pretty much maxed out unless something else changes. You could run it through the subway, but where does the train stop and turn around?

I like nowhereman's idea of routing alternate or 1/3 of Red Line trains to Skokie, but you'd need a big reorganization at Dempster both to berth 8-car trains and to set up a proper terminal with two tracks and a crossover. Would this service run 24 hours, or cut off at Howard after midnight? How do you communicate/brand this complex info to make it simple for passengers to understand?

How would Skokie feel about having a direct link to the South Side in their community, especially after the CTA's well-known role in the recent wave of flashmobs? They already went apeshit over the Old Orchard extension, because somehow having an L station next to a high school is an invitation to muggers, rapists, and pervs. Modern transit networks are built around the idea of crosstown trips, but the problem in Chicago is that we don't like the people who live across town. This is one of the reasons that through-routing for Metra has always died quickly and quietly, and why Philly is still having huge issues with their through-routing.

Start with a rush express service like the Purple Line and run it on the Red Line routing starting at Belmont. Take it all the way downtown and go up the 13th St incline to effect a turnaround (motorman walking to the other end of the train) and head back north. Expense and physical changes required would be pretty minimal.

Realistically I would get rid of the Yellow line all together. Use any fund and savings to upgrade service on dense areas in the city where transit makes more sense. What does the yelllow have 5500 -6000 riders a day. I bet it is by a considerable margin the most expensive CTA line per rider in the system. I'd do the same with the purple hell ridership on that has plummeted over the years & the route already has good metra access. Again use the savings in the system that serves areas with the density that warrants fixed rail. Or use the purple as an inner city express service...limited stop

The biggest issue is probably congestion at the Clark Junction just north of Belmont. That intersection with the Brown Line is already close to capacity.

Evanston is just as dense as Chicago and, in fact, denser than many parts of Chicago. We all know Metra provides crappy service. It's a shorter trip time to downtown but off-peak, the trains only run hourly.

Plus, Metra provides terrible access to any North Side destinations between Evanston and downtown (the stations at Lawrence and Lunt are not huge centers of activity).

The Purple Express serves an interesting function --- its core markets are actually:

(1) home-work commuting between Evanston and the north side neighborhoods of Lincoln Park and Lakeview, and
(2) supplementing Brown Line capacity into/out of downtown with an additional routing distribution option.

This makes it a very productive service, in terms of the number of trips served per car-mile operated, because it is well used in both directions during both peak periods --- which is striking because most "express" transit services tend to suffer from low productivity because their demand is so one-directional and a vehicle has to go all the way there then all the way back to serve demand, spending much of the time empty.

A relatively small percentage of Purple Line riders use it from Evanston all the way to downtown, at least during rush hours when the Metra schedule is decent.

As to claim 1 that is simply not true. As to claim 2, sure it is more dense than riverdale or Beverley; but we are not talking about those parts of the city now are we? The densest census track along the purple line is the one just north of Howard at around 16,000 / sq mile. The next densest is around 15,000 the rest float around 9-13, 000 sq mile. Now the line in chicago typically runs through census tracks with densities north of 30,000 sq mile; it rarely passes through anything much less than 20,000 and most are well above 25,000 sq mile several are north of 40,000 sq mile.

As to point 3: all the more reason for a Howard Metra stop with transfer to red / purple lines.

I would keep the purple line for in-city use only to augment the redline.


These two articles i think capture what I am speaking of:

http://chicago.straightdope.com/sdc20100701.php
http://chicago.straightdope.com/sdc20100401.php

To augment my point here is a graph of ridership levels on the L line 1985 = 100

http://chicago.straightdope.com/1985..._riders_v5.JPG

Ridership on the northside lines has either eclipsed or is very near historical highs whereas the suburban lines are around 70% of what they were 25 years ago